


RED | “your blood is my cherry liqueur”

by tissues



Category: K-pop, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: (kind of ahem), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Atmospheric, Biting, Blood, But in all honesty I’m doing this, Fun, Fun Facts, I can’t believe I’m writing a vampire fic either, I know, Immersive, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Okay disclaimer, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sorry for being a basic cringey ass ho, Succubi & Incubi, Supernatural Elements, Tags Are Fun, Vampires, Warlocks, Werewolves, Witches, Wizards, actually don’t I’m enjoying myself thoroughly, and you do a levels and shit what a fun time, anyways enjoyyy~, at least that’s the goal, because i think I can put a twist on this admittedly overused trope, but it’s basically a rite of passage at this point okay, but just college, by british school Standards lol sorry everyone else, help me, i bloody love warlocks and witches, i mean there’s vampire come on, i want to edge more towards the horror side of things, ill do my best either way so I hope this works out, im clueless, it will be there just not as prominently as some other fics, just in case tbh, just mentioned though, let me breathe please and thank you, lots and lots of fun I’ll tell you that now, none of the main cast, rather than so much focus on the romance, so come join the party, thanks for coming to my ted talk love u kiss kiss, thanks for reading xxx, thats 16-18 btw, the violence is why it’s mature btw don’t worry about that one, then uni comes after that, v descriptive
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 10:39:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17384939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tissues/pseuds/tissues
Summary: Out in the middle of the countryside, a manor house of marble white and gold trim awaits.It's a school, this isolated building: halfway a prison for young delinquents who're considered 'uncontainable' by every other educational facility on the globe, and halfway a play area for stunningly rich kids who's billionaire parents can afford to pay the hefty fees.Of course, there are those who sit in their own little group somewhere in between, with wealthy parents who need a dumping ground for their unwanted, yet clever children. Kim Taehyung is one of these poor souls.He expects to sail through the next two years under the radar, avoiding contact with both halves of the student body, though more thoroughly the former. Unfortunately, the eyes of a porcelain man follow him with every breath he takes, and as much as he tries to avoid the predatory gaze, he can never tear his eyes from the too-sharp canines tucked subtly behind his lips.For, Kim Taehyung seems to be the only one who's noticed these oddities on the infamous Park Jimin.





	1. Titanium White

No one dares to speak.

 

He sits in the backseat of his family's expensive black Bentley. This will likely be the last time they sit within miles of each other for months. They spend the moment in silence.

 

A cloud of tension and unease hangs above their heads like a bad omen, dark and foreboding. He can't bring himself to break the fragile quiet settled heavy on their shoulders, but it doesn't matter. He has nothing to say to these people.

 

Instead, he retreats to the rain-obscured view of the countryside, watching grey rivulets trickle down the window he rests his freezing temple against. He sees the partial reflection of his face in the glass, transparent but still there, and watches as his breath fans out across the cold surface.

 

The car winds down a lonely country road distinguished from the waterlogged fields running alongside it by its wet, black tarmac and grey concrete splatters. It seems messy, but its smooth enough, only the odd pothole off-setting the balance of the vehicle.

 

It's all he can see for miles in every direction- masses of flooded fields and nothing but grass, intercepted and divided by a single, endless, meandering road, wondering around pointlessly with nowhere to go but nowhere.

 

He's surrounded by the people he's known all his life, and yet he feels so hopelessly alone.

 

With nothing but the white noise of silence and the blank grey of the skies to accompany him, he allows himself to drift away on the blankets of rain as his eyes close to blink but refuse to reopen, a melody of overwhelming quiet lulling him into a dreamless sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He wakes maybe an hour later to the subdued noise of people arguing. It stops not two seconds later; they must have seen him blink awake. It doesn't take much to make the guess that they were probably arguing about him.

 

The car is quickly tossed back into silence. The pitter-patter of the rain against the roof remains the only consistent sound, the only sound at all. He finds comfort in its regularity, which is more than he can say for the way his life seems to be heading at the moment.

 

He chose a good time to fall out of his empty slumber. An enormous building rears its head from out of the misty vapour, washed out by the sky thanks to its marble white brickwork and dull gold trim.

 

He's surprised he sees it upon first glance, with the odd sheen reflecting what little grey light there is setting it slightly apart from the nearly identical backdrop of cloud, but the white manor house remains imposing despite its pallor, rising from out of the soggy ground like a monster.

 

Even from this distance, the size of it baffles him, and he struggles to picture the haunting palace-like place as a school. But a school it is, and as the monstrous building grows larger the closer they get to it while winding down the narrow country road, he has to come to terms with it, for all too soon it will become his new home, life and work.

 

After some time (he'd like to call it somewhere between five and ten minutes, but everything feels so monotonously the same that he can't really tell how long it's been), the ground beneath the black tires turns gravelly, like crunching sand under the weight of the car. The Manor House rises high above before the windshield.

 

He feels his mouth fall open in a silent gasp. The place is a Goliath. After a moment's thought, he grows anxious at the prospect of how many students must go here. And most of them are criminals. He shudders involuntarily, a lightly worried sigh releasing some of the pressure building in his chest. _Stay_ _calm_ , _make_ _a_ _good_ _impression_ , _go_ _unnoticed_.

 

The sound of crunching sand stops at the same time the engine cuts off. They're sat in an unmoving car: himself and the family who don't want him. There's a few moments of deadly quiet that seem to last for hours as he looks again outside the window, observing his new home. After having driven through a giant wrought iron gate, the Bentley had taken them up a stretch of well-paved road to a gravelled parking area.

 

This confuses him. This is the only available set of parking spaces, and yet they're one of just three cars here. _Where_ _is_ _everyone_?

 

Right on cue, his step-father clears his throat with a touch of awkwardness. He shuffles clumsily in his seat, turning his head to look not at him, but out through his window, almost as if if he's afraid to make eye contact with him. Taehyung doesn't react. He sits still, patient, silent, and waits for an explanation.

 

"We're among the first few here. The director suggested to come here a day early to settle in and meet the staff, get your room arranged and so on..." he trails off with a mock thoughtful expression on his face. "We have a meeting with him now." He turns away, nodding to himself, pleased with his curt evaluation.

 

Taehyung has a lot of questions; why couldn't he just come and sort out on the same day everyone else does? It's not in the middle of a school year, so why is this even necessary? Surely not every new student has a meeting with the director, so why does he need to? And if they do, there can't be that many students... then, why is the Manor House so big?

 

He has many, many questions, and he pauses for a while before settling on a response.

 

"Okay."


	2. | Pearlescent Marble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> well, i guess this is home now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chill song, just for u guys
> 
> Coffee Breath- Neoflesh
> 
> <3

The building’s heavy atmosphere settles over him like a cast iron mantle. On his shoulders lies a weight formed by dense fog, nervous jitters and the ever-imposing white-brick Goliath of a manor he’s expected to live for the next 24 months. He supposes, when the weather clears up, the place will be stunning in a much less intimidating way, but something in the air of this place tells him he’ll be followed around by one hell of a thundercloud.

Oh, how he’d love a thunderstorm tonight. He needs something to clear the air and freshen the soil with the comfortingly familiar scent of petrichor- thunder and lightning are two of the highest listed elements in his mental collection of favourite things. Nature’s electric light-shows are never anything short of spectacular, either, and he somehow feels that a storm will be an eerily appropriate welcoming for him to his new home.

Call it intuition, but he feels so on edge here that something’s bound to go wrong eventually, and the feeling plagues his mind for the rest of the bleak September day.

 

 

 

Once they exit the car, a valet meets them there with a golden luggage frame, offering to take his bags from him. Despite his initial shock at the kind yet assuredly standard gesture, Taehyung insists he help the man take his stuff to the room. Of course, his own kindness isn’t just that; he desperately needs some breathing space. Being introduced to his new room, he thinks, would make a nice half-hours break before his meeting with the headmaster. It’ll be much better than the awkward silence of sitting in the waiting room with his exceedingly quiet family, at least.

It surprises him just how much the odd boarding school acts like a five star hotel, for as peculiar as it is, he can’t deny the impressive facilities he’s seen so far.

That begins with his room.

It’s a grey, fairly bare space due to the influence of the weather outside the large window, but the quality of the furniture is certainly very good; soft sheets, warm, mahogany accents and bedposts, modern L.E.D lights in the ceiling and curtains of just the right, smooth texture. He knows many organisations are investing scary amounts of money in this institute, especially those who expect to gain superior employees from it (M.I.6 is a rather prominent example), but it never occurred to him that they might put those funds into the comfort of the students. Admittedly, he’s quite appreciative of the matter.

Not only this, but the room welcomes his decorations very accordingly. To combat the dingy grey he arranges a set of aureate fairy lights along the edge of the the loft bed he’s claimed. There’s another one of the beds in here, supposedly for a future roommate, but he doesn’t touch it. Whoever joins him can do what they want to their side of the room as long as it doesn’t encroach on his own.

He flicks the switch on at the plug and again on the plaited wire of the lights, and immediately after the room is flooded with warm, twinkling, coral light. He presses a few glowing stars of assorted sizes to the white plaster on the ceiling above his bed, fading them out appropriately, and arranges a crimson red carpet on the floor. The amount of space left over after doing this only serves to accentuate this raw size of the room, especially in comparison to those in the boarding schools he’s used to.

This really is another standard entirely. Although, it makes sense, he supposes. After all, with having such a small target bracket, the quality of the college must be exceptional for them to be noticed and be supported by such prominent organisations. He flops backwards onto the thick, woolly red, stretching his limbs and yawning with surprising comfort. It all felt very homely now, especially with his personal photography framed on the wall, little papers and post-it notes covered in lists of things to do with his time here, like ‘go swimming during the night’, and ‘write a horror novel’, and finally the small drawings depicting dancers and figures washed in crude watercolour. It feels like it belongs to him. It feels like he could get used to this.

 

His eyes flicker open, but he doesn’t remember ever having closed them. Someone’s knocking on his door, a strong female voice calling his name. His sister steps inside the room and scoffs at the sight of him sprawled on the floor. She toes his shoulder playfully with her boot as he gets to his feet.

“Looks like you’ve already made yourself at home,” she grins, but something about it is a little more empty than usual. Her eyes are dull, her posture wilts... he watches as his little sister’s smile flickers away a bit quicker than usual.

He sees it all, and opens his arms for a hug, lopsided, rectangular smile exuding as much brightness as he can force it to. “Come here, give your big bro a hug.”

She smiles wide and steps forward to squeeze the life out of him. When she starts to shake, Taehyung knows she’s crying. He holds her close and lets a tear slip down his face as well, hand rubbing soothing circles on her back. He doesn’t make a sound. It’s just her, half-yelling into his shirt, screaming about how unfair it is, how long he’ll be away, how he doesn’t _deserve_ this. He lets her go once she’s calmed down. They separate. Her eyes are wet and red.

“I came up to get you,” she starts, “they want you downstairs for the meeting.”

 

Taehyung sighs. He really isn’t sure how he feels about this. He’ll be sacrificing his entire idea of life for two whole years for the sake of an allegedly superior world-class college education. He can’t leave for holidays during these two years. He’ll celebrate his 17th and 18th birthday as well as two Christmases at this place in the absence of his family and friends, in a foreign country he hasn’t so much as visited before, speaking a language that isn’t his own. It’s quite the understatement to suggest he has mixed feelings about it. His sister turns on her heels to leave, but he stops her.

“Hey,” he calls to her, “I’ll be alright, you know. It’s not like they’re locking me away, or ruining my life at all. There’s probably not a better school in the world for me, if you think about what it is I want to do. All the best companies in my academic field come here for first port of call- I really will be okay.” He looks at her earnestly. “More than okay.”

Neither of them are at ease, still. She knows he’s lying to her, at least in part- they’ve always been an intuitive pair. Something just feels fundamentally wrong about this place. Not now, in this moment, in the empty school. Not the school in general. Not even the people inside it. No- this isn’t something that’s happening, but rather something that will. A moment in the future that has yet to pass. And, they can both sense it. In surrounds them in the air, but it’s Taehyung who bears the weight of it. The consequences are all on him now.

Nevertheless, they leave the room together with blank faces. He closes the door shut behind him, twisting a key (which the valet had leant him upon his arrival) in the lock until he hears a click. Number 317, the 17th room on the third floor, in between the elites and the criminals. Home, sweet home. Of course, this’s a huge generalisation, but until he meets the rest of the student body he won’t be able to differentiate between the reality and what he’s been told about them.

 

The building is undeniable beautiful. It’s grand beyond imagining, like some traditional European palace with it’s dramatic double staircase in the foyer, enormous arched windows, and Michelangelo-inspired paintwork reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel’s world-renowned ceiling. He rests a hand on one of the many great marble columns, running his fingers over it’s smooth grooves.

“They’re waiting for you,” a clear voice cuts through his appreciation, the flawless English accent catching both sibling’s attention. Taehyung turns to see the valet from before, white-gloved hands clasped behind his back professionally. He seems almost like a butler for the place with how many jobs the man seems to be doing. Taehyung adds ‘ _secretary_ ’ to his mental profile of the man. However, not a mere moment later, he edits the remark in his head- ‘ _temporary_ ’. The school has too big of a fund pool to only be able to afford one member of staff. Clearly, they just don’t come in this early in the school year. The staff currently here are available only to welcome him.

It’s a strange feeling.

 

“Of course,” he clears his throat, trying to sound as calm and collected as he can manage. His English, while nothing if not impeccable, is still accented, so he subconsciously tries to flatten that despite knowing he doesn’t need to. He’ll have to make sure that doesn’t become a habit. “Sorry I took so long, it won’t happen again.”

“Nonsense, young master Kim, you’re presence at Millennium Institute is greatly appreciated and we’ll accommodate ourselves to your time schedule. All is forgiven. Follow me, and I will take you to the Office.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again!! I’m trying to be more regular with my updates. This beginning part will move a little slow but that’s because I’m making up for how fast it’ll move further on, and trust me, these guys are gonna be like, street racing or some shit
> 
>  
> 
> ~tissues <3


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